Good evening,

It’s been a couple of months since I have written a volunteer diary entry on my experiences working on Canadian Pacific but with most of the work focused around cleaning the frames and various components on the locomotive it seemed sensible to hold fire until I have something actually interesting to report. The big and fantastic news since my last report was that the railway had been successful in its application with the Heritage Lottery Fund (more details can be found here). As a volunteer on this project you can understand that I am delighted with the result and wish to congratulate David Snow and his team for putting together a brilliant grant application. Its safe to say that I speak for the CanPac team at Eastleigh when I thank the Heritage Lottery Fund for their support and we can’t wait to see our railways flagship locomotive back in action hauling some lovely Bulleid coaches.

My last visit a couple of weeks ago involved taking apart from the right hand slide-bars which was a fiddly job mostly because behind the slide-bar there is a splash bar which was attached via 16 small bolts. This wouldn’t normally be a fiddly job but with all the mud/gunk that was on the splash bar and the location of some of the bolts being in awkward places, I basically had to hug the slide bar in order to get my spanner in a position to get the bolts out. The rest of the task was quite simple and the slide bar came apart quite easily. This weeks task involved cleaning the left hand side pony wheel which was a long task, that involved scraping, needle gunning and then painting it. Although it wasn’t a hard job it was very rewarding that at the end of the day it looked 1000% better than when I started. Anyway this was only just a quick update with hopefully a new project supervisor being hired in the next couple of weeks a lot of change is expected to our small band at Eastleigh.

Following the fantastic news about the railways successful lottery grant application for the Canadian Pacific we still have to rise another £605,000 for our £1.5million project. The project will see not just the overhaul of 35005 Canadian Pacific but also 2 wooden Bulleid coaches. As I have mentioned before, the boiler work alone is expected to exceed £100,000; so anything you can give will be gratefully appreciated, no matter how small you think it might be.

Please click here to contribute towards the fund via secure online payment.

Download the appeal form.

Both links take you to the Mid Hants Railway Website which is where you can find out more information on how you can help.  Thank you.

Don’t Forget to check out the Brookes Castle – Volunteer Diary to catch up on previous posts